6 Images of Abandoned Weaponry You Won't Believe Are Real

Rare, expensive materials, cutting-edge designs and top-secret prototypes are all hallmarks of the military industrial complex. It's how they produce all their beautiful toys: the stealth fighters, nuclear submarines and flying fortresses that are the cornerstone of our childhood fantasies and Michael Bay movies. But what happens when you get bored of your new toys? Why, you just toss them out into the middle of a field somewhere. Sure, they are worth a billion dollars and took dozens of years of intricate design and revision, but have you ever built a garage? That shit is hard.

#6. The Mothball Fleet

Pack up your towel, your shaky folding chairs, your ineffective cooler and those hilarious shorts that make it look like you're naked from the waist down, because you, sir or madam, are going to tear it up at the beach. Just as soon as you find a nice, secluded one that won't be too crowded, of course. When you get there, you turn to survey the vast beauty of nature (read: ogle some half-clad asses), but instead spy only an endless armada of motley battleships in various states of disrepair. You were looking for the nude beach, but you've accidentally wandered into the post-apocalyptic section.

There are thousands of government-owned ships sitting at anchor all around the United States right now. They're part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF), a collection of mothballed ships ostensibly for use in national emergencies or other times of crisis. But as the decades roll by, wars and disasters come and go, and still the ships just sit. Some are dismantled; some are abandoned until they rust and sink. And these fleets aren't hidden away in remote, top-secret locations, either: One of the biggest collections is the NDRF Ghost Fleet at Suisun Bay, California, only 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. Among that fleet is the battleship Iowa, which played a large part in several of America's wars, including WWII and Korea. In short, what used to be this:

Yes, that's duct tape covering the barrels. Clearly, this ship no longer presents any danger to society, should some unscrupulous individual seek to steal it and show his ex-wife's handsome new playboy boyfriend what he thinks of his precious yacht. Oh, but that would never happen, because even if you get past the duct tape (psh, good luck!), there must be tons of security, right? Not so much. In May 2011, Scott Haefner -- less of an "international superthief" and more of a "casual boat fan" -- managed to break through fleet security and spend an entire weekend photographing the remaining fleet. He and a friend boarded the ships and hopped from vessel to vessel for 48 hours, using only an inflatable raft and a few other supplies you could buy from any camping supply store. One of the greatest surprises Scott stumbled upon while out dicking around on the ghost armada was the Sea Shadow (IX-529).

Via Scotthaefner.comWe're pretty sure one of the shitty Brosnan Bond villains owned one of these.

Although to be fair, the Navy didn't necessarily want to mothball the Sea Shadow; that was a last resort. They initially tried to give it away for free. But since any takers would also have to take the Hughes Barge, no one took them up on the offer.

Via Angelfire.comApparently, no G.I. Joe fans or scrap-metal-needing meth-heads were around when they asked.

Today, the USS Iowa would cost $1.5 billion to build, which, combined with the Sea Shadow's $200 million, means there's at least $1.7 billion just floating out there in the bay, waiting for bored bloggers to raft out and walk around on top of it.

Despite what one would reasonably assume, this isn't just a side effect of the arrogant and wasteful nature of Western capitalist pig-dogs: When the Soviet Union collapsed, it could no longer fully fund its navy and so was also forced to abandon its ships to the elements. Now they sit in ports like Murmansk, rotting, rusting and practically begging for a Scooby-Doo episode to fire up inside of them.

But more worrisome than the sheer monetary waste might be the ecological factor: Since 1958, the USSR has built 450 naval nuclear reactors, and most of them are still technically in service ... but only because they were never taken out of it. Some of them are doubtless still sitting in these slowly sinking hulls, just waiting to either explode, contaminate the nearby waters or possibly whip up some ad-hoc Incredible Hulks. Think that's just idle conjecture on our part? Nope: In the 10 years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, 170 nuclear submarines were taken out of service, but only 40 of those were ever officially dismantled.

#5. Abandoned Russian Submarine Base

Ah, vacation time: Find an obscure little island paradise, kick off your shoes, roll into the hammock and just let the stress wash away. Yep, the hardest thing you'll have to do all day is take a leisurely walk with the dog. Maybe he'll run off barking at something unseen and disappear into a darkened hole in the side of a cliff, but what are you gonna do? He's your buddy. You have to go after him, and when you do, you might stumble right into the lair of a James Bond villain:

Via Englishrussia.com"Shit, we have to go back. Missed a power up in the last hallway."

#4. Aircraft Boneyard

The desert: a spiritual respite. It's harsh, unforgiving and merciless, and there's a whole bunch of it right outside of Tucson, so you can swing into an In-N-Out Burger for a Sprite break if shit gets too real in the Mojave. You won't go tripping over the abandoned detritus of a world war in a place like this, right? Right. Just crest this one last dune and --

This is just outside the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tuscon, Arizona. It's called the Boneyard, and it's where military aircraft go to die. The arid desert climate is perfect for mothballing aircraft with minimal damage to their components, so they can be cannibalized for scrap later. But these are junk planes, right? Surely nothing valuable is just sprawled out in the desert sun waiting for somebody to figure out what to do with it. Well, a closer look shows the profile of a number of recognizable aircraft, including B-52s (B-52H models cost upwards of $50 million each) and F-14 jets (of Top Gun fame, and each of which cost $38 million to produce). And there are hundreds upon hundreds of them, all just sitting out there, oxidizing.

Yes, this is inexplicably one of the higher-res Google Earth locations (some things just feel classified, you know?),and you can zoom in close enough to easily make out any number of models in various states of disrepair. It's like a huge browser-based game of Where's Waldo?, only instead of looking for a bespectacled Canadian mime at the zoo, you're looking for a live missile in a haystack made of billion-dollar aircraft.